


The Heart of a Family

by pokeasleepingsmaug



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV), The Warrior Chronicles | The Saxon Stories - Bernard Cornwell
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, I will not apologize for making my favorite suffer, Not Canon Compliant, Thoughts of death, Torture, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24255289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokeasleepingsmaug/pseuds/pokeasleepingsmaug
Summary: After the Battle of Dunholm goes sideways, Sihtric is captured by Kjartan and Sven.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	The Heart of a Family

Sihtric can't remember how long it’s been since he's seen the sun, though he knows when night is because that's when Kjartan and Sven leave him alone. He pleads with Nott to make the night last forever. He does not think he could endure another day in Dunholm. 

…..

It breaks Uhtred's heart to remember the look on Sihtric's face as they dragged him away. He hadn't even screamed, had barely flinched. He'd just looked like he'd known this was coming all along, like his taste of freedom was too good to be true.

But he and Ragnar and Brida have spent the last two weeks coming up with a plan. They have to be careful, Dunholm will not fall easily. But they know its weaknesses now, Sihtric's knowledge with their own firsthand sight. Besides, Sihtric is his man, and Uhtred can't leave him to die in Dunholm.

…..

It is fitting, Sihtric thinks, that once his mother's screams echoed through Dunholm, and now his own do, too. He did not scream at first. But when fists had no affect on him, they switched to other methods of beating. 

Sihtric's forearms are covered in burns, the smell of his own sizzling flesh is thick in his nostrils, and Sven laughs as he holds the red-hot knife to Sihtric's skin once again. 

"I should cut off your head and send it to Uhtred Ragnarsson," Sven taunts, his ugly face inches from Sihtric's, breath sour with ale as it hits Sihtric's nose. Sihtric strains against the leather straps around his wrists. They are the only things holding him upright, now, and he uses them to straighten his back, the whip-marks burning, and spit straight onto Sven's cheek. 

Sven sinks a fist into his gut, and for the first time in his life, Sihtric hopes he will not be able to catch his breath. 

…..

When Sihtric is left alone with his thoughts, he can pinpoint the exact moment the attack failed. It is his fault. He did not know Kjartan had hired mercenaries. 

Every time he is left alone, he remembers the horrible tightening of his gut when the reinforcements spilled from the great hall. He remembers being surrounded, the bellow of Kjartan screaming that his son should be taken alive, to come back into the heart of his family, where he belongs. 

Four sets of hands like iron bands clasped his arms, but still he nearly escaped. He had met Uhtred's eyes from across the courtyard, and he thought, for the briefest of moments, that his lord was coming for him. 

But then everything went black, and he awoke in the chamber beneath the hall where Thyra had been imprisoned for so many years, his skull throbbing, a bloodied knot on the back of his head.

He does not blame Uhtred and Ragnar for leaving him behind, better to lose one useless man than a whole company of warriors. 

He just wishes Uhtred had thrown an ax into his skull before he fled the fortress. 

….

Sihtric is so thirsty that even his eyes feel like sandpaper. He keeps them closed as often as he can, because every blink is an agony. He focuses only on the squeaking and shuffling of nearby rats, and tries to guess how many hours it's been since Sven left. He's drifting in and out of wakefulness, though he cannot call it sleeping. It is more like dropping into oblivion, like the sun suddenly disappearing behind thunderclouds, and he hopes that soon, the corpse-goddess will embrace him with her one rotten and one living arm. He will accompany her gladly. 

He opens his eyes against his will. He swears his mother is there, her edges blurry in the darkness, her hands soft on his hair, his face, his burnt arms and whipped back, the dislocated knee. Has she come to collect him? Can a pagan go to the Christian heaven if his mother has become an angel? 

Sihtric uses what he thinks must be the last of his strength to reach out to her. She vanishes. He is so thirsty that he weeps without tears. 

He is still weeping when Kjartan descends the ladder and hangs his lantern on a nail in the wall. Kjartan crosses his arms over his broad chest and glares down at his bastard offspring, eyes emptier and colder than winter oceans. "You are too like your mother, boy, but unlike her, I will break you." 

Kjartan yanks him to his feet and binds his wrists into the leather straps. 

When Sihtric can barely breathe through the blood in his nose and mouth, Kjartan cuts the straps and watches Sihtric crumble into the bloodied straw covering the dirt floor. Sihtric can't stop the groan that falls from his lips when Kjartan kicks him in the stomach. 

Kjartan laughs, and this is the only time since he has been taken captive that Sihtric does not want to die. He does not want Kjartan's laughter to be the last sound he hears.

….

They will attack at dawn. They have spent a month planning and marshaling forces, and Uhted is afraid it may have been a month too long. He fears every morning that he will find Sihtric's head at the door of his tent. 

But he never has, and Uhtred hopes they are not too late. 

…...

He is always disappointed when he wakes up. 

The sounds of a scuffle drift through the thick walls of his prison, but he does not think anything of it. Conflicts are common in the fortress of Kjartan the Cruel. His eyes drift shut again. 

He wishes his mother had taken him with her. 

….

Sihtric thinks, with relief, that he must finally be in Hel, or that maybe Freya has favored him and taken him to Folkvangr. He is lying on furs, and surely Kjartan and Sven would never allow such a thing to happen, not when they were so close to killing him. 

His stomach sinks when he realizes what must be happening. They've ordered him nursed back to health, so they can bring him to the brink of death once more. Is this their plan for him? To keep bringing him to death and saving him from it, only to bring him to it again? 

Sihtric will not allow it to happen. All of the slave-girls know him, he will plead for death. Perhaps the girl tending to him will take pity on him. Maybe he can ask it as a favor to his mother; she helped so many of them in any small way she could. 

He tries to open his eyes, to speak, to plead for death, but instead he only drops back to sleep. 

…..

Sihtric is closer to death than Uhtred has ever seen a man before, but Brida has knowledge of herbs and a willing assistant in the form of Finan, so Uhtred clings to the hope that he will live. 

He was barely recognizable when they carried his unconscious, emaciated body from his prison, and if not for the faint, racing pulse and the erratic rise and fall of his skinny chest, Uhtred would have thought him dead already. 

It has been five days and they are still in Dunholm because Sihtric is far too frail to travel, but Uhtred can barely enjoy the relief of finally having avenged his father and freed his sister. He does not think he will breathe easy again until Sihtric's eyes open. 

…..

Sunlight slants across his eyelids, and he opens them without thought. He is alone in a bedchamber, lying on clean furs. His body aches, but it is the ache of healing, and not of fresh injuries. He is no longer thirsty. 

Sihtric hisses as he forces himself into a seated position, and a man that he hadn't noticed sits bolt upright from a pallet on the floor by the bed. "Take it easy, lad." The lilting accent is soothing, the voice soft. 

Sihtric's throat constricts, and he can barely choke out the man's name. "Finan?" 

"You didn't think we would leave ya to die in Dunholm, lad?" Finan smiles down at him, full of understanding, and Sihtric knows he does not need to say that he will never doubt again.


End file.
